


'Till I Reach You

by Mazarin221b



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF!John, First Time, Grief, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-10
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 03:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazarin221b/pseuds/Mazarin221b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months after Sherlock's "death," John inadvertently finds out that he is alive. Determined to find Sherlock and unable to let this second chance at what he really wants slip away, John realizes he's learned more about being an investigator than he expected. But in the end, what he brings to the partnership is being uniquely himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nothing Is As It Has Been

**Author's Note:**

> Sincerest thanks and love to Carolyn_Claire, Sc010f, Longtimegone, and Gillian, for their support, eagle-eye beta, and smacking me around when I need it.

John wakes on day sixty-three and wonders if he’ll ever wake up without counting days ever again.

He knows there’s something he’s missing in all of this, in Sherlock’s last, calculated, and unbelievable words, something jagged to hold onto, something to catch and hold against his heart, to buoy him in the long days to come. To help stave off the regrets that claw at him, threaten to drag him under with constant twilight repetition of every single tender and heated and unsaid thing that had built up in his heart for eighteen months, despite his best efforts to shed them.

The flat is quiet, sunlight filtering through half-opened curtains, dust shimmering and swirling in the slight breeze from the cracked window. It’s a picture-perfect summer morning, and all John wants to do is go back to bed, hoping, as he’s hoped every morning for sixty-three days, that when he next wakes up, it will have all been nothing but a horrible, twisted, unbelievable dream.

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

It isn’t, though, and John knows it. Day sixty-four looks a whole lot like day sixty-three when John wakes again and pulls on his trousers and shirt. He makes tea and toast, because now the bread is in the breadbox and tea is in the tin, the kettle is actually working and John doesn’t have to go on a hunt for the last unbroken or uncontaminated mug. He swipes a hand across the spotless worktop to brush off crumbs and takes his breakfast to the table, pulls out a chair and sits down with a sigh.

It’s too quiet without all the clattering noise Sherlock would make at any hour of the day, so John switches on the news just to have something to take up the echoing space left in the flat where books and butterflies and bubbling chemicals used to reside. The lump in his throat looms large, so he takes a sip of tea, only to find that it’s stone cold for the fourth morning in a row. He hates that he does that, gets lost in reverie, but he can’t seem to stop himself, can’t shake himself loose enough to simply live, to get on with his day without finding large chunks of it taken up by grief. 

Regardless, he does have responsibilities, so he pulls on his shoes, locks the door and makes his way to work.  To absolutely no one’s surprise he sees the woman with the green bag is there on the tube platform, waiting.  He gets in and takes his usual seat in the corner at the front left, and she sits on the right, drops her bag and rummages around for a novel. He wonders how far she’s gotten in “Pacific Passion” by today.

She smiles at him over the top of her book; a quick, flirtatious quirk of her lips. Oh.

John manages to smile back but hopes he doesn’t encourage her. Once, perhaps, he’d have crossed the aisle and teased her about her choice in reading material, charmed her number out of her and taken her on a date in one more attempt at moving past a hopeless infatuation with dark curls and a quicksilver mind. But it would be no more possible now than it was even then, not when his dreams, sometimes chaste and sometimes not, of Sherlock still don’t abate, day after monotonous day.

The train stops with a jerk, and John tries not to jostle people on his way off. He leaves the station and walks the rest of the way to Bart’s, midway through the third week on the job and his first attempt at some ramshackle construction of a life. Working in the morgue wasn’t what he’d expected to be doing and isn't really what he wants to be doing, but it seemed appropriate, given all that he’s encountered and learned over the last two years.   When Mike had mentioned over a quick pint one evening that the morgue had space for an assistant and trainee, well. Why not? He certainly doesn’t need the money, Sherlock had seen to that, but going back to school for pathology is better than sitting on the sofa being miserable.

"Morning John!" Molly says, ponytail twitching over her shoulder as she turns to pull her white coat on. "Had two in overnight so I've got the space cleared. You did say you were done with Mrs. Blevins, correct?" Molly's fingers fly over the keyboard, bringing up Mrs. Blevins (77, died after being hit by a car) and giving her approval to John's report.

“Yeah,” John says and stands over her shoulder, examining the work list for the day. Two autopsies and associated paperwork, lovely. Hopefully they’re still fresh. He has trouble with the ones that aren’t. “She’s ready for release.”

“Good, her family is waiting for the report. They’re filing a lawsuit against the driver, it seems.”

“Okay.” John still isn’t good with more than one-word sentences these days, so the relative isolation of the autopsy bay in the basement is a pretty soothing place for him, even with the never-ending, , ghostly presence of Sherlock. Perhaps because of it.

John finds himself ruminating about the last time he saw Sherlock in Molly’s office, nonchalantly draped in her visitor’s chair and doing his best to awkwardly charm her out of an autopsy report. Something had changed in her since Christmas, something that straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin and made her give Sherlock a wry twitch of the lips and a roll of her eyes before letting him examine the report. 

John never did find out what it was, and he hasn’t yet thought to ask.

“I said, d’you want to have dinner tonight?” Molly says again and John starts, refocuses. “I mean, nothing fancy, just a Chinese, but, well, I thought you might like some company.”

John panics for a moment. “Ah, Molly, I … I don’t think—“

“No!” She says, and looks horrified. “Oh no, not like that! I mean, I thought, well, I hate for you to be home alone so much, John, really.”

“It’s fine, Molly. It’s kind of you, but I’m doing okay, most days. It’ll just take time.”

“Oh, okay. That’s fine, then. But I’m here if you need me.” She flashes a nervous smile, and John nods back, and they both go to work without another word said.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Ten hours later and John’s ready to call it a day. His back hurts, his shoulder hurts, and, after the introspection of the morning, he’s been thinking of Sherlock much more than usual.  It’s just … it was so pointless, and senseless, and he tries not to go over those last two days of insanity every single moment, but he misses Sherlock so much it’s a crushing weight on his heart, and it brings him near tears at unexpected moments.

It’s good he works in the basement, he supposes.

John showers and changes and packs up his things, waves a quick goodbye to Molly and decides to walk home in the warm summer evening. Walking clears his head, keeps him focused as he watches the people on the street, wonders what Sherlock would have made of them all. Reminds him of before, when things were exhilarating and that, in itself, was normal.

He finally reaches the front door of the flat and reaches into his pocket to find his keys aren’t there. He pats himself all over—jacket, trousers, looks in his bag—no keys. John sighs. They must be back in his locker. He grumbles as he flags down a cab, irritated at himself for the waste of money to simply pick up a set of keys and reminding himself that if he’d just put his keys  in his bag every single time, he’d never have this problem. 

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

He’s three steps from Molly’s office door (lights on, why are the lights still on?) when he hears it.

“… and I’m not even supposed to be here! What would you have done if I’d been where I thought I’d be, which is at dinner with John?”

John frowns, wondering who Molly is speaking with. She seems irritated, hurried and nervous, and as he resolves to knock on the half-opened door and ask if things are okay, John hears a voice he never thought he’d hear again, a voice he thought stilled forever just outside two months ago.

“I’d have trusted you to make the appropriate adjustments. You’ve done surprisingly well so far, actually.”

“Oh, thanks so much,” Molly snaps.  “Glad to know I’m now an accomplished liar.”

There’s a pause, then John hears Sherlock’s voice again, much quieter and sounding almost abashed.  “Just pull those three and show them to me, quickly, please.”

The metal drawer next to Molly’s desk squeals open, and John finally shakes off his shock and  pushes through the door. 

He gets a glimpse of Sherlock’s panicked face on the screen—pale, thin, and hair shorn off—before the video screen goes black.

“What the hell was that?” he demands, rounding on Molly in a fury. She curls back in her chair.

“I—I—I was speaking to someone,” she starts, and John’s vision goes red, hands shaking.

“That wasn’t someone. That was Sherlock. Sherlock!  You know, the dead one! What the hell kind of game are you playing?”

Molly slides from her seat and edges toward the door. She looks terrified, John thinks, and perhaps she should.

“Look, it’s not my secret! I promised, John, I’m sorry, but I promised!” Her voice is high, panicked, and her eyes look glassy, like she’s fighting not to cry.

It’s funny how trauma can split the mind, make you feel outside yourself. John’s experienced that at least twice; he never expected to feel it again. But the fury, the fear, the expanding bubble of hope he’s trying to fight down has him lightheaded, and he wants to grab Molly by the arms and shake her until she spills everything he wants to know. “Tell me where he is, Molly,” he says, and his voice has gone dark and quiet.

“I don’t know.”

“Liar.”

“I don’t! I swear! He said he needed to let people think he was dead for a while and that you and Mrs. Hudson and Greg were threatened. I did what he asked but I don’t know where he is now!”

John takes a step toward her, the need to force a confession consuming him, but when Molly flinches, lifts her arms to shield her head, John’s better sense resurfaces and he falls back, horrified. This is Molly, his boss, his _friend_. He leans against the wall, then slides down until he’s crouched on the floor, chest heaving and blood rushing in his ears. He tries to push his hair back and realizes his hands are shaking so badly he can barely control them.

“Jesus, Molly, I’m so sorry, I—I don’t know…” he trails off, trembling, drops his face in his hands and tries to breathe. Sherlock’s alive. Alive, gloriously alive and John starts to laugh, the sound stretched and awful and uncontrollable until he feels Molly’s gentle hand on his shoulder and looks up. Her smile is bright but a little worried, and as John grips her arms the laughter turns to tears and he cries until he’s empty, there on the floor with Sherlock’s secret-keeper in the center of where their story began, and ended, and began again.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“So you’re sure he’s not in England.” John twists the cap off another bottle of beer. They’d retreated to Molly’s flat, the better not to be overheard. If John had learned one thing in Sherlock’s company, it was that you never know who might be listening. Her sofa is deep and squashy and John’s had enough beer he feels like he’s melting into it.

Molly takes a deep pull and drops her head back against the sofa cushions. “Pretty sure. He sort of sounded like he was in France last week – he’d answered the door in French, anyway, while we were talking. I suppose it could have been Belgium.”

John rubs his hand across his forehead. “You do realize he could be in Canada. Hell, he could be in Africa!”

“I know that, but I don’t think he’s that far away, somehow.” She rolls her head to the side to face John. “Believe me, I wanted to tell you so many times. I told him he was wrong to keep this from you.”

John sobers quickly. “Yeah, well, not the first time he’s put one over on me. I still . . . I just can’t believe how well he, well, the both of you, managed to fool me.” God, he still just feels so _stupid_.

“Only for that quick second, John, that’s why you were pulled away so quickly—he knew you’d notice if you’d had time to…examine. He put one over on everyone, John. But I’ve never seen him so afraid, so serious. He was very determined, and he trusted me to help him.”

“I’m glad he has you. But I have to find him. You know I do. He won’t come home just because I’ve found him out.”

Molly sits up and puts her beer on the pristine coffee table. “John, I’m not trying to, to discourage you, but I think there was a very good reason he left. He said you were being threatened. And you wouldn’t even know where to start!”

“Maybe not, but I bet I know who might.” John hauls himself forward, pulls himself out of the enveloping cushions and leans his elbows on his knees. He can feel the need for action coalescing in his bones, the yen to get out and do something that’s been banked far too long. He’s had two months to mourn and an hour to rejoice. It’s time.

 

_Title From: The Head and the Heart, Rivers and Roads_


	2. Our Friends Will Be Gone Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He finds it sort of ironic that he’s preparing to find Sherlock as he did to go to war. And he didn’t know when, or if, he’d come back then, either._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks for excellent beta to the fantastic Longtimegone, and special love to Carolyn-Claire, who gave me what I needed to see this through.

The evening of day sixty five is close, warm, and the heat brings out the smells and the damp and John ignores it all, bent on one single objective: locating someone, anyone, that was involved in Sherlock’s death-defying escapade.

He starts in the shadow of Waterloo Bridge, dropping requests wrapped in ten pound notes in cups and baskets as he walks up the Embankment, receiving nothing but startled or blank looks in return. It’s bound to be hopeless; he’s guessing everyone was sworn to secrecy and despite the mercenary nature of their relationship, John knows Sherlock’s homeless network has always been loyal.

By nine o’clock John gives up, finds a spot to get a cup of coffee and slumps down at a table near the back. This is the most walking he’s done in weeks. His leg hurts, his head hurts. He’s too keyed up to eat but low blood sugar is pulling at him and fraying his nerves. It’s entirely possible nothing will come of his requests, anyway, though the bright little flame of hope that now kindled in his chest is going to be hard to extinguish.

After leaving the café and wandering around and leaving notes for another hour, though, the flame is starting to burn a little low. John turns toward home, head full of Sherlock’s voice, his laugh, the querulous edge to his voice when he’d go too long without a case, wondering what it is he’s done now, why his hair is so short and his cheeks so hollow, and hoping he’ll get a chance to ask him soon.

He’s so wrapped in his own thoughts he almost misses the man sitting on the step next door to the flat; in fact the man finally has to grumble “’scuse me, sir,” before John stops and feels something pressed into his hand.

Startled, John digs into his wallet with shaking fingers and hands the man a ten. The little note is crinkled and smudged, but John can clearly read “Elephant and Castle, next to Tai Tip Mein” before he shoves it in his pocket again and hails a cab. This may be it, someone in the homeless network has decided to talk and John’s more than ready to pay whatever that’s required to hear it.

He wanders around the outside of the restaurant until he sees a familiar figure sitting on an upturned crate on the back side of a little newspaper shop. Her flaming red hair is set off by a shabby blue pullover and green skirt and John’s sure seen her once before, but he can’t remember her name. But he’s sure she’s who he’s supposed to see. He walks up and waits, unsure about where to even start asking questions.

She looks up from her worn and crinkled newspaper and gives him a good once over before quirking her lips in a quick smile. “Took you long enough,” she says.

John’s mouth drops open. “Did everyone in the entire world know this but me?” he says, and winces at the whine he can hear in his voice. “I’m John Watson, and I—“

“I know who you are,” she says. “Had to get him out, and he always paid well.”

“Where?” he says, and everything feels urgent, as if it isn’t done this instant he’ll run out of time.

“Ireland. The South coast. Killowny,” she says, and turns the page. “But that’s not where he’s stayin’. “

 _Ireland,_ John’s mind echoes, and immediately Moriarty clicks into place. But Moriarty’s dead, having blown his own head off on the top of that roof, and good riddance.  John realizes he’s still standing there completely engrossed in his own thoughts when the woman shakes her newspaper straight again with a sigh.  “Thank you,” he says quickly and hands her a twenty.

“Nah,” she says, and shakes him off. “He’s a twit. I told him he’d never make it longer than six months without someone finding out. He owes me a hundred when he gets back.”

John chokes a laugh back at that. “Well, thanks, anyway. I’ll let him know.”

“Ta,” she says blithely, and John turns, paces his way back toward home, thinking.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

As soon as John gets in, he runs upstairs and throws a handful of pants and socks into a bag, then changes his mind and pulls half of them out again. He hasn’t the slightest idea how long this will take, how difficult it will be, but he does remember one thing from his time overseas: travel light. It makes you quicker, more mobile, more flexible for whatever is thrown your way.

He finds it sort of ironic that he’s preparing to find Sherlock as he did to go to war. And he didn’t know when, or if, he’d come back then, either.

In a matter of minutes he has his gun cleaned and checked and hidden carefully against his body in a specially-designed concealment holster Sherlock had given him last year. John had packed it away, along with all of his other Sherlock-investigation related items—glass-cutter, sticky tape, picklocks, ski mask—never intending to use them again. John shakes his head at the box full of blatantly illegal items and puts the picklocks into his pocket, a familiar and comfortable weight.

The flat lights will have to be set, as usual, so John tosses his bag on the sofa and drags out the old timers from a spot under the desk and plugs them all in, sets them for random and then stops in the act of setting the last and sits back on his heels. Christ. Everything he’d have done then, everything he’s doing now, so familiar and almost routine and this time it’s all to find Sherlock. Sherlock, whose gravestone he’s wept on, whose bed he’d slept in when the nights were just too bleak.  Who obviously wanted him to think he was dead so he could go off and do who knows what, who knows where, and for who the fuck knows what reason. And it hasn’t even occurred to John until right bloody now to _not_ go find him, that the difficulties he may face in doing this could overwhelm him, destroy what tiny little scrap of a life he’d just started building. And the very real possibility of not being able to find Sherlock, now that he knows...is not something John wants to contemplate right now.

 John lets out a heavy breath.  His heart twists, pains to know Sherlock didn’t trust him enough, didn’t believe in him enough to bring him along, to even let him know he was alive. All of the things John’s learned, all of the things he’s taught Sherlock in return, and it isn’t enough that Sherlock felt he could rely on their friendship and the bond they’d formed, the hundreds of little threads that held them together, and instead snipped them clean in a single instant of bleak insanity that still flashes in his mind as if it happened yesterday.

Because that’s all John can think, that Sherlock’s decision was made in a moment of complete non-rationality, that something, or someone, had shaken him so badly that he’d felt that he’d had no choice. That he’d had to disappear so completely it really was as if he were dead and buried.

The lights flicker on by themselves and John puts his head in his hands. What on earth is he doing? Sherlock is a master investigator, a brilliant strategist. This…this thing that he’s done, he’s covered every single eventuality, John’s sure. He’s counted on being thought dead. John will never find him, not now, not when he’s had two months head start.

However.

If Sherlock went to Ireland that means there’s something important there. And the only important thing John can think of is Moriarty. And if Moriarty is dead, then there must be something else Sherlock is looking for. Something that he’d missed, that he needed to take care of.

John may not be the most experienced investigator of the pair of them, but he’d been on his share of searches for missing  people. He had paid attention in all those months of chasing Sherlock around, and the thing he knows he should do is go to the last place the person reliably was and work from there.

Breadcrumbs in a forest, he thinks, then winces. Perhaps. Sherlock would know better, though.

But John knows him, knows every inch of him, and there won’t be breadcrumbs but there will be signs, and John can’t deduce anything from a used envelope but he knows what Sherlock might do with any knowledge he finds on one.  And as John hoists his bag over his shoulder and locks the door, he can only hope that’s enough.

…...............................................................................................

Killowny, John finds, isn’t really where he expects to find anything relating to a criminal mastermind, a criminal organization, or anything remotely criminal at all.

It’s a tiny hamlet on the southern coast, miles and miles of green, gently rolling farmland stretching out in front of him until it ends abruptly at the sea. The small hotel he’s staying is actually closer to Ballinacurra, a few miles back but still perched on the edge of town, near the river.

Small places like this, John muses, as he walks up the high street, best place to start is the pub.

It’s a fairly busy Saturday night, a pile of lads in the corner playing darts and good-naturedly harassing each other with loud guffaws taking up most of the space, a few  couples here and there and the barstools are half-full. So when John sees the bartender finally stop pulling pints he takes a quick gamble and waves him over.

“Listen,” John says quietly, “You been around here long?”

The bartender laughs. “All my life, despite all attempts to escape. Why?”

“A friend of mine was here a few months ago, a Brit, tall, possibly a shaved head.”John shows him a picture of Sherlock on his phone. “I’m looking for him. He’s been missing since then, and I wondered if you’d happen to have seen him. He was coming here—might have been looking for someone named Moriarty.”

The woman at the end of the bar glances his way sharply, but looks away just as quickly.

“Nah,” the bartender says, “Not seen him. But that’s not a surprise, really, Jim always did bring a lot of people down.”

John almost chokes on his beer. “Jim?”

“Yeah, Jim Moriarty. His Granny owned the farm, but she died some years back, left it all to Jim and his sister. He used to come in the summer, keep the farm up. Put a swimming pool in, of all things. Had his friends down all the time.”

John shifts uneasily. So he’s on the right track, obviously, but he’s not exactly going to be able to ring the doorbell and sit down for tea. Jim’s dead, but who knows if anyone else has taken over in his absence.  John wonders if Moriarty had an heir, a second-in-command. He must have had someone he trusted, at least in some respect. Perhaps that’s the person Sherlock is after now? John takes a swallow and thinks.

He could go back to the hotel and sleep on it, he supposes.

John gets directions to the farm, drops his money on the bar and downs the rest of his beer.  There’s no sense messing about—either he’ll learn something or he won’t, and the best thing he can do is get on with it.

He decides to leave the car – no sense giving away his position first thing— and walks the two miles down the road in the late summer sunset of day sixty six to the large stone farmhouse the bartender had described to him. It looks quiet, dim. There aren’t any cars in the drive, and no lights in the windows. There are security lights that John can easily see the silhouette of in the slanting sun, but none of them are on yet.

He takes a cautious and circuitous route around the main house property. This place is bound to have security measures, probably ones so sophisticated John won’t even know he’s triggered them. Sherlock managed to get in, somehow, John is sure of it. But the question is _how_.

 _Every system has a weakness_ , John remembers Sherlock telling him when they were investigating the bank for Sebastian Wilkes.  _There’s always a flaw, an easily overlooked, tiny little hole that will blow the entire thing open._ In the case of the bank, that was an obvious one; no one ever expected access by a fourteenth story balcony door.  But there aren’t any balconies here that John can see, just the house and the garage and what looks like an old barn.

John finds the door of the barn is locked, and picking it open doesn’t produce any sort of reaction—no alarm, no lights, not even a beep or a twitch. Neither does slipping inside and weaving  through dusty piles of old equipment, engine parts, and cans of oil and petrol until he finds a ladder.

A quick look around in the gathering dusk convinces him he’s very much alone, and he shifts the ladder across the lawn, past the swimming pool and to the back of the house, leaning it against the siding and under the smallest window he can find. Likely a bathroom, perhaps a utility closet, and he’s glad he’s lost some weight of late because he’s going to have a hard time with this as it is.

The window isn’t unlocked when he finally clambers to the top. It’s firmly latched and John has a quick moment of panic hanging from one arm as he does his best to jam the blade of his pocketknife in between the frame and unhook the latch. When it finally catches he sighs in relief, but he’s not doing this without leaving traces. The frame is bent and he’s not wearing gloves, but he’ll be damned if he cares at this point. A jerk and a twist and the window slides open as John tenses, ready to drop twelve feet to the ground and make a run for it if necessary.

Nothing follows. Still no alarm, no shouts, not even a stray vehicle coming down the lane after a night in town. John makes his way through the now-revealed utility room and out into the hall. The old floors squeak slightly as he carefully opens every single door. He knows what he hopes he’ll find – the nerve center of the operation, or at least a satellite office. Something that will have a computer in it.

He makes it through all of the upstairs rooms (bedrooms, all of them, save a few bathrooms. The large room at the end of the hall is garish, and John’s trying to ignore cringe-inducing implications of the mirrors on the wall; Moriarty’s room, most likely, or it was. ) He’s halfway through a dim and echoing downstairs recon when a dark shadow catches his eye, making him flatten himself back against the shallow indentation of a door, his heart stuttering in his chest. The soft brush of something whispers against the thin hall carpet, barely perceptible, and he tenses, ready to spring upon whoever is there and run for it. The quiet grows oppressively loud, his ears straining and just as he makes ready to leap out into the dark, something soft brushes his leg and he jumps, badly startled.

“Jesus Christ what the hell is—“ he says, and looks down to see a small grey cat in front of him, calmly giving him the once over like she’s made a judgment and found John seriously lacking.  John rolls his eyes and lets out a huff of breath and reaches down to scratch behind the cat’s ears. She lifts a paw and swats at him.

“Brat,” he says, and shakes off the shudder of fear that lingers in his shoulders. The office has to be around here somewhere, and he’s halfway around the entire house before he comes across it – one large office cum library, exactly where it would be in any old home of this size. John shakes his head at his own inefficiency and strides over to the large desk and quickly shakes the mouse.

The screen lights up, the password box highlighted. Sherlock, John tries quickly, and the screen goes red. John snaps back in shock, but instead of an alarm, he gets a second try at it. He’s not going to have more than three. He may not have more than two. The computer looks so ordinary, just a normal desktop, and John pokes at the CD drive to see if anything will come out. Nothing does, but as he slides his hands under the desk, under the bottom of the middle drawer, he feels something like paper against his fingers.

He pulls it a little, and the paper comes off. A sticky note. With “RulesOfAcquisition” written on it. John stares. It can’t be. What sort of criminal organization puts passwords on stickynotes on the bottom of the desk like a bank accountant? He giggles at the password, wonders who the Star Trek fan of the group is, and slowly types it in to be sure every letter is perfect.

And it is. The screen lights up, nothing at all on the plain blue background except three things: a web browser, a spreadsheet, and a picture file. John carefully opens the picture file, which is comprised of hundreds of folders, each labeled with a date. He’s a little nervous of what he’ll find, but the first one reveals what looks like surveillance photos of a couple that John’s never seen before. The next is a woman holding what looks like a gun. Another of two men kissing, and just as John is about to leave it, the next is of Sherlock.

John sucks in a breath. Sherlock, leaving his fencing club with his hair wet and plastered to his forehead. His thin white shirt emphasizes his lean frame, and the jeans he’s wearing, his favorite darkwash denim, ride low on his hips and John feels a familiar longing in his stomach despite his concern over the voyeuristic nature of the shot, and mentally slaps himself. This _is what you’re here for, idiot, to get another chance. Just focus._ He’s guessing there are plenty more where those came from, and he simply drops the entire file into the trash, hits empty. They won’t be gone forever, but at least he’s made it a hassle.

John tries the spreadsheet next and it’s like he’s hit the jackpot.  There are a host of place-names on the bottom of the sheet, each tab named “Dover,” or “Brooklyn” or “Seville,” and when John clicks “Dover,” a long line of numbers appears – outlay, hours, manpower, expected value, profit, loss.  Dates, times, names all stretch across the top. Moriarty keeps his books on Excel? Oh god, it’s laughable. The greatest criminal mind of his generation and he’s keeping track of it all in Microsoft Office.  John giggles, then realizes somewhere in all this, Sherlock must have found what he was looking for.

But what would he be looking for? Was there a specific operation? A place? A name? John starts clicking through tabs, and when he reaches around two dozen, he pushes back from the desk and grips his hair in frustration. Dammit. He’ll never sort this out. He doesn’t have Sherlock’s gift of insight, borne of years and years of studying crimes and criminals, their methods and madness. John stands and walks toward the window.

Sherlock is out there, somewhere, and John is absolutely positive he’s not just out there hiding. He’s doing something, something he needed to come here first to do. So, he obviously found what he needed here. What would it be? Think, John. Sherlock’s eyes saw everything, took note of the smallest details, but he always did seem to have a weakness for the shiniest baubles of cases, those that not only were the most interesting, but those that were the most intricate, the most complex, the ones that shined the brightest on resolution.

John takes a deep breath. It’s in there, he knows it. He can’t let this opportunity slip away from him, not when he’s right here, with it right under his nose. He’ll never find Sherlock any other way, and knowing that he's alive and able to be found strengthens John’s resolve.

He sits back down at the computer, clicks through all of the tabs again, idly noting exactly how much money is being made on each operation. There are definite hierarchies to these things – some larger than others, some with large, complex staffs and some with only a single operative. John clicks on another tab and stops.

France. Nice, on the Riviera. The outlay is small, the manpower moderate, but the expected profit is in the millions. This is nothing like any of the other operations, where the larger the take the larger the allotment of manpower and time. There are only four people listed as assigned. The leader of the operation is named Sebastian Moran, and when John sees the percentage of the profit he’s entitled to, John’s almost certain this is what caught Sherlock’s attention. The biggest fish in the sea, the shining bauble Sherlock is after.

John smiles, scribbles down what he can from the file, and does a hard reset of the computer simply out of spite. Then he slips back out of the window and heads back toward the pub, not even bothering to hide the evidence of his crime. It won’t matter. By the time anyone notices he’ll be long gone.

The date of the operation is four days from now.  And he needs to get to France.

 


	3. Rivers and Roads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The sky is barely beginning to stain pink as he looks out over the countryside. The rhythm of the wheels over the rails, the steady click clack matches the beat of his heart, calm and sure and absolutely certain of his mission and path for the first time in two months. It’s a wonder he ever survived this long, honestly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the lovely and patient and kind Longtimegone for excellent beta, and to Carolyn_Claire for giving me what I needed to get this off the ground.

John jerks awake in the pre-dawn hours ( _day sixty seven_ ), face cold and stiff from where it was pressed against the glass of the train window. It feels damp and cool even in the heat of summer, and John shivers in his light shirt.

The sky is barely beginning to stain pink as he looks out over the countryside. The rhythm of the wheels over the rails, the steady _click clack_ matches the beat of his heart, calm and sure and absolutely certain of his mission and path for the first time in two months. It’s a wonder he ever survived this long, honestly.

He wonders what Sherlock is seeing, if he’s awake, if he’s plotting, planning how to take advantage of the information he’d found. If he thinks of John, perhaps, sometimes, and the strange and wonderful bond they’d formed. Before that first night was even over John had placed Sherlock above everyone and everything, a knight templar guarding that which he deemed— deems—most sacred. He can feel the pull of Sherlock across a continent; his own need to protect and care and love pointing a true north to the one person that has drawn him in like a gravity well, like a black hole, inevitable and forever.

John clears his throat and crosses his arms against the chill. It’s ridiculous to think of these things now when he’d never bothered to make his feelings known before. He’d never said a word or made a gesture that would ever tip Sherlock off to just how far John had fallen, and how the entanglement of his life in Sherlock’s had felt like immersion, like being filled with light, with heat. He’s impatient, twitchy to start again just as he’d begun to fight his way back down into easy, smooth normality, and he wonders if that’s something he should be worried about, too.

The train stops at Lille and a solitary man gets on – largish, bull-faced and scowling. John notes him absently but doesn’t really pay that much attention until he maneuvers himself into a seat directly diagonal from John’s.  He doesn’t look like a man on holiday, in his plain tan trousers and striped shirt, but someone who has somewhere specific to be. John can’t stop glancing at him, and when he catches his eye an hour later the man stares for a moment then looks back down at his cheap paperback book.

The spark of recognition in the man’s eye makes the hairs on John’s arm rise. The man is vaguely familiar but that doesn’t mean much; he could be any of hundreds of men who’d been under his care at one time or another, or a former classmate, or anyone. No reason to feel so nervous about the casual perusal from a stranger on a train.

John gets up to go to the loo and the stranger’s eyes follow him, leaving John walking just that bit too fast to get to the next car. God, he’s going mad, jittery with nerves and anticipation and suddenly everyone’s a threat, everywhere. His senses have woken up again, perhaps, after being dormant for so long. Which is good for what lies ahead, but still. Ridiculous.

John washes his hands, decides he could use a bit of a change in scene to settle his nerves, and walks all the way to the back of the train to a lounge. There’s a mother trying to entertain a wiggly toddler, but otherwise the car is empty and John settles into a plush bench with a sigh. The little girl shrieks with laughter and John looks over at her just in time to see the door to the car open and the stranger with the Dick Francis novel walk in.

John’s heart starts to hammer so hard he’s sure his skin is vibrating. _Instinct_ , his mind whispers, and he eases into the comfort of trusting it. Any outward sign could betray his wariness, and at this point he feels almost high with adrenaline, his brain smoothly cataloging and assessing, even as his body relaxes into the seat.

“Pardon me,” the stranger says, and sits down across from John. “But I noticed you back there and I can’t help but think you look familiar.  John Watson, isn’t it?” The man smiles, a wide grin with too many teeth, and holds out his hand.

 “Yes, I am. And you are?” John shakes his hand, eyes him speculatively. A big man, but not a strong one, he doesn’t think, shoulders thick and rounded under his shirt.

“Vincent Spaulding,” he says. “Five hours on a train, too much time to think, thought I’d check before it drove me mad.” Spaulding tips back in his seat, crosses his legs. “Having a bit of a getaway? Don’t blame you. Saw you in the papers, obviously. What a mess. My condolences.”

There’s really very little to say to that, but Spaulding’s casual attitude rankles. “Yes, thank you,” John finally says.

“I’m off for business myself – why they can’t spring for a flight I’ll never understand. But, train it is. Bloody thing, waste of a day. I’m for Monaco, eventually. You?”

John pauses. “Little spot, on the coast,” he says, and hopes he seems casual enough. He’s not sure what this man’s game is, but everything about him screams not to trust him, not at all. “Quiet. Peaceful.”

Spaulding nods. “Exactly. Must be hard, what with all the paps around.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Well, no one blames you, of course, not at all. That sort of man could have taken anyone in.” A smile, sympathetic and just a bit smug, plays at the corner of Spaulding’s mouth and his eyes are far from friendly, flint-like and a bit too narrow.

John swallows, forces himself to stay seated when he really wants to jump across the aisle and wring Spaulding’s neck. “I never believed it, and I don’t believe it now. Sherlock Holmes is—was, a great man.”

“Yes,” Spaulding says quietly. “And now he’s a dead one.”

John’s willing to bet that if he looked up Vincent Spaulding in Sherlock’s Index, he’d find that he’s probably one of any number of criminals he and Sherlock helped find their way to the dock. So he stands and uses his looming perspective to lean in close. “I don’t know what you’re implying, and I don’t know what you want. But I’m more than happy to interrupt my holiday to throw you off this train if you don’t leave, now.” John steps back, between the mother who’s been giving them increasingly alarming glances and Spaulding, and crosses his arms over his chest.

Spaulding smirks, heaves himself to his feet. “Pleased to meet you, Doctor. Enjoy your holiday.” He saunters out of the car and John settles in with a shudder and a sigh and watches France pass by through the windows, his mind a jumble of adrenaline and umbrage and fear.

Perhaps not as ridiculous as he thought.  He needs to be more careful.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

He finds a tiny hotel in Nice that promises nothing more than clean sheets and extra-strong coffee every morning, dumps his bag and collapses on the bed. He can’t fall asleep, he really can’t. He doesn’t have time to waste sleeping, not when Sherlock may be so close now that they’re breathing the same air. He scrubs his hands over his face, forces his body up and off out the door before he can think too hard about it, and demands of himself at least part of a good day’s work.  

The sheet of notebook paper from the house in Killowny is creased and smudged, but John doesn’t really need it to remember the details of the operation he now knows by heart. The first place to start is the scene of the impending crime.

The Gallerie Ferrero is tucked off of a small side-street called Rue Dante less than three minutes walk from the Mediterranean.  John shifts his sunglasses on his face and tries to focus enough to take in the details of the building despite the fact that he hadn’t slept well, hadn’t eaten breakfast for nerves, and really, really has to take a piss.

There’s a glass double-door set in the middle of the façade with a window on each side, all fairly normal. A sign on the door lists hours and days and they’re definitely open, so John sucks in a breath and pushes inside, his arrival heralded by a subtle electric chime.

It’s a tiny, narrow space, the walls covered in modern paintings and prints and glass cases down the middle of the room displaying sculptures and decorative glass. Everything is very subdued and quiet and dim, lit by artful spotlights and John tries to take a quiet look round, focusing on the tiny price tags in the corners of all the paintings. They’d have to knock off the entire place to reach the value they thought they’d get from here, which seems like quite a bit of effort for a tiny little art gallery. The price of the sculptures adds to the impression that there’s more under the surface and as the door chime rings again, John leans forward, feigning closer examination of a print, and looks at the front desk out of the corner of his eye.

Christ, it’s the man from the train, Vincent Spaulding.  But Spaulding’s name wasn’t on the list John saw in Killowny; there were only four names and his wasn’t one of them.

John slowly maneuvers until his back is fully to the door, but there’s no way he’s going to let Spaulding see him if he can help it. He’s slightly behind a sculpture case and in-between it and the door, so the distortion of the glass might help camouflage him for the moment.

What was it Sherlock always said about coincidence? “If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?” John laughed at the time, because he was sure he’d heard that before somewhere, but here it is, making his heart pound and his neck sweat. Everything he’d ever learned from Sherlock about holding still, not drawing attention to yourself, everything the army had taught him about waiting, about patience, is being put into practice right at this instant. The man continues to speak with the woman at the counter, and John slowly makes his way along the wall closer to the door. Eventually the man walks straight toward the back in animated conversation with the woman, and John counts to five, until the man’s back fills the doorway to rear offices, and darts through the front door into the street, chest heaving.

He needs to sit down but knows he can’t, so he staggers down the alley and into the street, around the corner to a bistro and collapses into a chair just inside the door. 

 Good Christ, he thinks, then giggles to himself. This is completely bonkers. He used to do this all the time—how on Earth had he ever survived it? _Because Sherlock was at your side, sharing it all, one insane adventure at a time._ True. Yes, that’s entirely true, and despite his exhaustion John is buzzing, alive with excitement and adrenaline. He turns to look out of the window, across the Rue Anglais to the sea, and when he does, he idly takes in a man across the street, walking along the pavement.

The gait, the stride, the proud head and the long arms are absolutely unmistakable, despite the short hair and sun-kissed skin and odd pale clothes.

John shoves back from the table and slams outside. “Sher-!” he starts, until the memory of Vincent Spaulding and art galleries and the obvious camouflage of Sherlock’s clothes cuts him off mid-shout. The heavy traffic, lorries and buses and cars, frustratingly block and pen him in and prevent him from reaching his rightful place by Sherlock’s side.

The sun is slanting now, down low and into John’s eyes, as he sees Sherlock try to cross traffic toward his side of the street. He doesn’t see John, or at least doesn’t acknowledge that he has, and glides between the gaps in cars easily, gracefully, until he makes the pavement not two hundred yards away. John is about to make a run for it, tackle Sherlock into the nearest building, hold him there, shake and demand and take until reality slams into his head and he knows for absolute certain that a scene in the middle of the busiest street in Nice is not going to help their case at all. So he stops, Sherlock’s name caught in his throat and his feet pinned to the pavement, arm half-raised.  Sherlock slows, hesitates, and John’s heart stutters, his gaze pinned in desperate hope to the back of Sherlock’s bare neck. Sherlock finally stops with a hand on the stair rail of a nearby office and turns, meets John’s eyes for a searing second  before mounting the steps to the building entrance and ducking inside.

John can barely breathe. Sherlock now knows John is here and he chose to ignore him, and while there may be a very good reason for it, John doesn’t want to hear it.

He just wants Sherlock.

 


	4. I Miss Your Face Like Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can’t believe Sherlock is actually here, that he was right in his evaluation of the Killowny information enough to get him this far. But even with his newfound confidence in his own investigative abilities he knows that the chance of finding a man that didn’t want to be found and now knew someone was looking is so small to be laughable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to longtimegone for excellent beta, and to Gillian, for being the first to read this part months and months ago and encouraging me to keep going.

John has no intention of leaving now that he’s made it this far, so he waits. He waits until the sun sets and the stars shine faintly through the glare of the city, and Sherlock still doesn’t reappear. John’s hesitant to storm the gates, so to speak, but he knows how to be patient, probably better than most.  He spends the rest of day sixty-seven and the first instant of day sixty-eight still waiting, and realizes he can no longer feel his feet because he’s been still so long. His determination wavers, sinks into frustration and impatience. Going back to hotel is a dreary and depressing prospect, so he wanders for a while, trying to determine the next, best course of action, until the sound of the sea grabs his attention.

A few shops are still open so he buys a bottle of the cheapest wine he can find and heads to the beach. The tide is high, obscuring most of the sand, and the lights from the hotel sparkle off of the waves. The moon is so new John can’t see much past the first few feet of churning foam except for the occasional light of a boat in the distance.

He can’t believe Sherlock is actually here, that he was right in his evaluation of the Killowny information enough to get him this far. But even with his newfound confidence in his own investigative abilities he knows that the chance of finding a man that didn’t want to be found and now knew someone was looking is so small to be laughable. Even when the person searching for him is a friend—someone who would never be there to hurt him.

The thought twists, ugly and unwanted, that perhaps Sherlock refused to come out precisely because John was the one looking. John closes his eyes and clenches his fist around the neck of the bottle, frustrated and angry and confused. No, that can’t be. The look in Sherlock’s eyes, that one heart-rending glimpse, seemed to speak of a thousand unsaid things, of longing and hurt and restraint. John very much wants to know where he factors in that.

John takes another swig of wine (flat and bitter, how appropriate) and stares out at the water, his heart calming, frustration ebbing with the wash of the waves. Even if he did just get that one tiny glimpse, that’s enough, really. Enough to know that Sherlock is alive, breathing somewhere in the world.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Sherlock says, from behind.

John closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. It seems Sherlock wanted to be found, after all. He swallows heavily and doesn’t turn around. “You knew I’d try,” he finally says.

“Did you leave that night, or wait until the next day?” John can hear soft footsteps in the sand, the rustle of wind through fabric.

“Next day. Had to get a train.”

Sherlock’s laugh is sharp and brittle, and he drops onto the sand next to John, staring out at the whitecaps shimmering in the light. “I’m impressed you found me.”

John snorts. “Well, I was taught by the best.”

“It’s difficult to apologize when I’m not remotely sorry for what I’ve done.” Sherlock fiddles his bare toes around in the sand. “I’d do it again in an instant.”

 “Why?” John asks, annoyed at Sherlock’s ever-present ego. Because, putting aside pesky things like actual emotion, that’s really the central question. Not “Why aren’t you sorry?” But “Why would you do it again?” because Sherlock does very little that isn’t planned, anticipated, understood and worked over to the last degree, and this was certainly not a last-minute, thrown together hash of a plan.

“He had snipers trained on you, and Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade, and I needed to fall, to appear, at least, to kill myself to call them off. Moriarty had anticipated everything, but what he failed to realize was that I had anticipated _him._ ”

John inhales sharply at Sherlock’s blunt statement. So he had done it, after all. He’d sacrificed himself, in a manner of speaking, for those he loves. “You could have told me later. You didn’t have to leave me in the dark all this time.” _And leave me drowning in my own sorrow, living a shell of a life, you selfish, selfish bastard._

“I needed you to be there, to make it real. And I needed to be free to work on my own, to do what I knew needed to be done.”

John bristles. “I’m perfectly capable of keeping up with you—“

“That’s not the point. I can’t protect you, don’t you see?” Sherlock kicks his heel into the ground, throwing sand out in front of him. “I couldn’t keep you safe if you came with me. No one would bother you if you were alone in Baker Street, and not only that, they wouldn’t even question the fact that I’d … died.”

John feels anger and hurt bubble up, hot and liquid. He tries to keep the words back, choke them down, but they erupt, fire and acid and fear. “You miserable twat,” John snarls, and Sherlock flinches. “I’m not your possession! You can’t keep me in a box, direct the course of my life for your convenience! You need me, you know you need me if for no other reason than to keep your idiot brain intact and your gob shut. I won’t let you use me like that again, do you hear?” John stops, his chest heaving, and to his horror he can feel his heart constricting, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. Sherlock has his hands wrapped around his knees and won’t even look at John, and John isn’t even sure what to do, now. His heart hurts, his head hurts. “Please,” he whispers. “It was like a prison, every stupid second of every day. And believe me, I counted them all.”

Sherlock shifts to his knees, shuffles over to kneel next to John and takes his hand awkwardly, tentatively squeezing John’s fingers. “I—I suppose didn’t fully realize the level of grief you would experience. I am sorry for that.” Sherlock’s face is drawn, pale, and lined with sorrow.

John almost believes him. ”No, didn’t figure you could.”

“I still say you should go home.”

“I still say no. You need me.” John quickly kisses the back of Sherlock’s hand, the skin warm and tinged with salt. “You’re going to have to get used to the idea that there are people who love you, Sherlock.” John turns his head, finally lifts his eyes to meet Sherlock’s fully and gives him a tentative smile. These are not words they say to each other, have never said. But second chances are rare and precious gifts, and despite his anger John won’t waste his any further.

Sherlock himself looks dumbfounded for a moment before he glances down and their joined hands. He doesn’t try to unravel them though, simply sits down and cradles John’s hand in his own, clears his throat and says, “Since you aren’t leaving, then I had better tell you what the plan is for tomorrow.”

John chuckles at Sherlock’s inexplicable ability to flip topics on a dime, but he savors that well-remembered voice, a warm hand holding his, and lets the sound of the waves and the darkness hide them away for the moment, invisible to the rest of the world.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

John’s eyes blink open the next morning in the startling sunshine of a bright summer’s day. He can see the slice of perfect blue sky through the sliding glass balcony door of Sherlock’s hotel. The sheets are twisted around his legs and he feels comfortable and boneless and almost too warm to move.

Sherlock is no longer in bed though they’d both climbed in last night. “You may as well stay here,” Sherlock had said. “If you insist on helping I need you near. It will just be easier. Besides, I won’t sleep much anyway.” He’d gone out onto the balcony and lit a cigarette so John stripped down to his pants and settled in, eyes open, drinking in the sight of Sherlock’s profile until sometime later he’d been startled from sleep by Sherlock sliding in next to him, back carefully turned and curled on his side. A flash of blood and a thready pulse flashed through John’s mind until the rhythmic breathing next to him settled his nerves until he fell asleep again.

The breeze ruffles John’s hair and he finally gathers the resolve to blink open one eye. His gaze catches sight of Sherlock again sitting in a chair on the balcony in a pair of pajama pants, shirtless in deference to the heat. His head is thrown back, one hand holding a cigarette and the other on his lap, his thumb slowly dragging along the semi-erection John can see the shape of under the fabric.

This is … John doesn’t quite know what it is. It’s unusual, that’s for certain, and he should move, or shift, draw attention to himself but his breath is caught in his throat and his muscles are frozen. The moment is suddenly fragile, more fragile than glass, delicate and small, the most intimate and personal act John’s ever seen Sherlock engage in. One breath would destroy it utterly, likely never to be recovered. Sherlock alive was enough of a shock, but this is a bit more like an earthquake, shaking John’s worldview and letting the pieces resettle into something new and a little sharper.

Sherlock’s fingers slide down his length casually, almost as if he doesn’t care about getting off, just likes the feel of it, the pressure against his cock. John wonders about that, about the unhurried nature of it, like he has all the time in the world. Is this how he usually does it? This languid and heated and slow? His hips shift slightly and he tucks his fingers down the front of his pants and begins to stroke a little harder, a little faster, but still so perfectly controlled and quiet that if John really were asleep he’d never have woken up.

Speaking of which, John knows he’s about to get caught, and he doesn’t know how he feels about that. He’s not entitled to share this moment with Sherlock, but in some small, greedy part of his heart he feels he is. To see Sherlock stripped bare and vulnerable, giving John a chance to see if there’s any little part of that steel exterior he might find a way to get a lever under. Any part he can set his heart against and finally, finally, break through. 

Sherlock must finally feel John’s gaze, or perhaps pick up on the guilty thoughts in John’s head because his eyes flash open. He looks startled for a moment to see John watching him but when John doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, Sherlock relaxes, his hand resuming its motion. They stare, and John watches in mute fascination as Sherlock’s eyes go from sharply watchful to unfocused to barely open as his body finally takes over and he shivers once, his lips parted on a gasp.

They still don’t say anything, John sweating beneath the sheets, the traffic a continual hum through the open window, Sherlock staring with burning eyes.  John wants to take the three steps across the room and climb into Sherlock’s lap and kiss him, drown in him, but the sharp ring of Sherlock’s mobile breaks the stillness and he snatches it up, stalks to the bathroom and slams the door.

John is so startled and overwhelmed he doesn’t even attempt to wank; the erection he’d had is long since gone in the tide of something a little deeper than he was prepared for, and when Sherlock finally emerges from the shower John takes his turn without saying a word.

They don’t speak until they reach the pavement outside an hour later.

 


	5. Don't Know What To Make of This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The walk from the hotel to the Gallerie in the late morning was silent, John half-embarrassed but unbearably intrigued by Sherlock’s little show and wondering desperately what he was trying to say when he looked at John with such focus, such fascination. He found Sherlock glancing at him every so often as they walked with a tense, anticipatory expression, like he had something on the tip of his tongue but couldn’t quite say it. John can feel the need to push him, to lever this new awareness, to flex the growing tension and see what will happen when it all breaks apart._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With tons of thanks for spectacular beta to Longtimegone, Thisprettywren, and HiddenLacuna. You ladies are the absolute best!

Surveillance is surveillance no matter where you are, and John, despite the giddy excitement of the last few days, is bored with it. He’s bursting with questions, with demands, with desperate longing and of course Sherlock had the brilliant idea to leave him watching the Gallerie and the small antique shop next to it while he buggered off to talk to an informant.

“Watch and keep track of everyone who goes in and out,” he’d said, going on three hours ago now. John knows Sherlock’s doing something important; at least, he hopes he is, and not simply avoiding John. A young couple makes their way toward the Gallerie and John surreptitiously takes a quick picture from his spot around the corner of the opposing building.

The walk from the hotel to the Gallerie in the late morning was silent, John half-embarrassed but unbearably intrigued by Sherlock’s little show and  wondering desperately what he was trying to say when he looked at John with such focus, such fascination.  He found Sherlock glancing at him every so often as they walked with a tense, anticipatory expression, like he had something on the tip of his tongue but couldn’t quite say it. John can feel the need to push him, to lever this new awareness, to flex the growing tension and see what will happen when it all breaks apart. But now isn’t the time, not when the work calls, demands their attention first.  He leans against the wall and sighs, trying to focus on his mission and not on remembering the post-orgasmic glow in Sherlock’s eyes.

Sherlock finally returns with a bag slung over his shoulder and John gives him the rundown of who he’s seen. After listening to John with half of his attention and flipping through the photos on his phone, Sherlock declares that no one was of any significance whatsoever. John rolls his eyes and deletes the lot, annoyed. The sun is starting to slant down as afternoon turns to evening, and Sherlock leads John to the brasserie around the corner.

“Oh, thank God,” John says. “Another few minutes and I would have abandoned you for a coffee.” He orders coffee and three crêpes as Sherlock watches him with a raised eyebrow. “What?” he says. “I’m hungry. I’ve not eaten since last night.”

“I’d forgotten how demanding your stomach can be,” Sherlock says, and his smile is fond, almost wistful. John stops with his fork halfway to his mouth and the moment stretches, silent and charged, until the rattle of cutlery against the second plate bearing John’s dessert distracts him.

“I fully expect there to be no lookouts,” Sherlock continues, all business again. “They’ve managed to get everyone that might be a distraction out of the way, so they don’t anticipate being disturbed. The antique shop owner, Fournier, was more than happy to let his new, charming, and obviously planted employee Max Price convince him to stretch his week-long holiday into two weeks, and even gave him the keys to the shop while he’s away. They’re confident.”

“And you’re sure they’ve been tunnelling into the vault next door all this time?” John asks. This seems awfully complicated for less than ten paintings. “What are they doing with the mess?”

Sherlock smiles. “Excellent, John,” he says, and John beams. “They’re hauling it out in small quantities, in the rubbish. Easily disguised in bin bags a little bit at a time.”

“But it’s taken them, what, nine days so far?”

“Yes. The Zinaida Serebriakova collection in the Gallerie vault is worth at least five million. There have been bids recorded, and two separate appraisals in the past year.”

“And you think that’s what Vincent Spaulding was doing there,” John says, trying to pull details of their conversation on the beach out of his mind. He’d been so elated to see Sherlock he hadn’t paid as much attention as he should have.

Sherlock’s brow furrows, his lips twisting in that way that makes clear his annoyance that John’s still failing to grasp the essentials, but nods. “He’ll have valued the collection, verified its authenticity. They wouldn’t have continued if he’d not given the go-ahead, and I saw signs earlier today that they had.”

John swallows his coffee. “We still have two hours until you think they’ll start. Are you sure you want us both going in the front? Because I think one of us should watch the back.”

“There’s only one way out of the basement. I think it would significantly increase our chances of holding the lot of them if we go in together.”

John smiles. “Is this your way of saying you need me?”

Sherlock fiddles with his napkin. “Not at all. It’s just more efficient this way.”

“Sure,” John replies, and polishes off his final bite.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“I thought you said four,” John hisses in the dark, as he watches the men, some alone, some in pairs, make their way into the back entrance of the antique store. “Not six.”

“Must be a recalculation. They decided they needed more manpower.” Sherlock slinks along the alleyway, John so close he’s basically under Sherlock’s arm.

“Hell of a recalculation. They’ll be armed.”

“Not likely. Well, perhaps one. Two at most. You did remember your gun,” he adds, and it doesn’t sound like a question.

John nods and watches the men unlock and walk through the back door of Fournier’s shop and close the door behind them. They wait a beat before carefully continuing around the edge of the concealing skip toward the building.

Sherlock pauses, looks to John for confirmation, and at John’s nod, carefully and quietly picks the lock and opens the door. It’s smooth and perfectly silent, and the room they find themselves in is dim and empty. Despite how easily this is going at the moment, John’s really not happy with this plan in total. One exit from the basement that would lead to potentially two exits from the building, through the front or back door. The hallway toward the front is narrow and an obvious choke point, which could work to their advantage, but if Sherlock is correct, and he always is, they’ll be the ones trapped when the stairway to the basement takes three turns before it ends. No, the more he thinks about this the more he doesn’t like it at all.

“Sherlock,” he whispers, and tugs on Sherlock’s jacket. “I say we position ourselves at the doorways and call the damn police. Hold them in here.” The windows are high and blocked by shelves, and there are no other exits. John is pretty sure he can keep track of six for that long.

Sherlock, to his credit, does think about it for all of thirty seconds before he disagrees. “No. I want to keep them as close to the basement as possible. If we flush them back into the basement we can keep them more tightly together, lock them behind the door at the bottom of the staircase. I can also ascertain if Moran is there. In the confusion of this larger room, there will be more chance to flank us, and Moran could get away. Now, let’s go.”

John rolls his eyes and prepares himself. If it all goes tits up, he can at least say he warned him. Hopefully it won’t, as his bullet-proof vest is far, far away in Baker Street.

Sherlock edges up to the basement door and opens it a crack. John can hear men’s voices, smell a whiff of cigarette smoke. There’s a creak and a small scattering of what sounds like stones, and a shuffling sound.

“That’s six. Four more to go,” A deep voice says, and by the predatory grin on Sherlock’s face the man he’s been looking for, Sebastian Moran, is here. They both draw their weapons and creep down the staircase until they reach the bottom, closed off from the rest of the basement by a small landing and closed door. They nod at each other and break into the room, Sherlock covering high and John rolling low, beautifully coordinated and in sync like they’d never missed a single day.

The looks of surprise on the faces of the people in the room are priceless, but none of the others are as shocked as Vincent Spaulding and a large, bald man John’s almost certain is Moran. The hole in the wall between the antique shop basement and the vault that had been built into the Gallerie next door is neat, clean, and easily camouflaged, John notes, by large shelves on both sides of the hole. The men are ferrying the paintings to open crates to be prepared to ship.

“What the hell?” the bald man says, and reaches into his jacket. Before he can pull his hand back out, though, Sherlock has his pistol trained right between the man’s eyes.

“Moran. How distressing to see you again,” Sherlock says, and even as fury reddens Moran’s face, John can see Vincent Spaulding’s skin turn a sickly white.

“You, you’re—“ Spaulding starts, then turns to John. “And you!”

“Cheers,” John says, and steps back to block the way back up the stairs and keep an eye on the rest of the group.

“Not one for intelligent conversation, is he, Moran? But then, that’s not what you have him for. The Serebriakova collection is more in his line, correct? Like these.” Sherlock steps sideways and pulls the paper from a few frames, revealing the framed canvases inside.  “And aren’t they lovely. I’m sure the market could hold them for at least five million.”

“Six,” Spaulding says automatically, then flinches when Moran snaps at him to shut up.

“I had a feeling there was more to what happened that day than the rest of us ever knew,” Moran says, casually sliding his hand from his jacket and leaning against the shelf. John tightens his hand on his gun and glances around. He has to maintain his position to hold the entire room in check, but by watching Moran’s body language, the veneer of casual repose that hides a body primed for action, John knows that he’s already figured a way out.

John sees Moran’s plan a second too late. “Sherlock,” he shouts, as Moran ducks behind Spaulding, obscuring Sherlock’s clear shot. He dives through the hole in the wall and disappears into the Gallerie vault. Sherlock fires once at the top of the wall over Spaulding’s head, and the resulting chaos leaves John one one side of a group of five men and Sherlock on the other.

“Don’t you dare!” John shouts, but Sherlock ducks through the hole after Moran anyway.  John growls in frustration, his way toward the Gallerie blocked until he points his gun at Spaulding and fires just past his knee. “Fucking move, all of you,” he says, and herds the entire crew to one side. He should deal with them, hold them there and call the police, but the trembling shudder of near-panic he feels as he sees Sherlock disappearing from his sight, again, overrides his better sense.

The Gallerie vault is dim and laced with shadows as  John charges through,  stumbles his way around the boxes and frames to the heavy and wide-open gate. He can hear the echoes of Sherlock’s footfalls at the top of the stairs, so pounds off after them and gains the top of the stairs in four large bounds, only to find the exhibit space empty. The light from the open back door catches his attention and when he slips through, he just catches the flicker of Sherlock’s jacket as it disappears round the corner of a parking structure on the other side of the alley.

“Shit,” John breathes.  He pushes himself to catch up, and when he hears a heavy thud and a pained groan that sounds distressingly like Sherlock, he forces his legs to move faster, ignores his burning lungs and skids around the corner to see Sherlock holding his nose, blood dripping down his chin and onto the concrete as Sebastian Moran points a gun at his heart.

 


	6. 'Till I Reach You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sherlock nods, eyes large and dark and liquid, desire apparent in his shallow breaths and clutching hands. John pulls him up by the hands, and they stumble the three steps from the loo to the bed and collapse on it, coming together with slow, deep, indulgent kisses that taste like adrenaline and blood._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for excellent, through, and clever beta to LongTimeGone, Thisprettywren, and HiddenLacuna. I'd never have made it this far without them. And a shout out to Carolyn-Claire, who got me on the correct path to start with.
> 
> And, almost five months after I started writing it, we're done. Thank you to everyone who had the patience to get through this, who've left comments and kudos and love. I appreciate it more than I can say.

 

John quickly strips off his coat and watch – nothing to drag, get caught or flash—leaving him in a tee shirt and jeans and shoes that are mercifully quiet against the concrete floor. He slides through the door on the opposite side of the structure and circles behind the row of cars in a crouch, his gun cold and hard in his hand, not even warmed by his body heat.

“—was very clever. I can see why he liked you so much.” Moran’s gun has started to drift slightly, no longer pointed straight at Sherlock’s chest but listing to the side with inattention the longer he talks. _C’mon, Sherlock, keep him gabbing,_ John thinks, and he creeps slowly between two cars.

“Well, I do have to say that setting up his offices around the corner from Baker Street really was rather flattering. I mean, there’s being a fan and being a fan.” Sherlock’s got his bored voice on, one eyebrow raised with contempt like Moran’s the least interesting thing in the universe despite the fact he’d been searching for him for almost three months. “Then again, Moriarty didn’t have anyone else to talk to that could keep up with him.”

It’s a push too far. Moran flinches, growls, and as the gun snaps level, John pounces. The gun goes off as John can feel Moran’s skull under his hands, his back under John’s knees, and before anything else can happen he cracks Moran across the back of the head with the butt of his own gun, leaving Moran dazed long enough that Sherlock can dive to reclaim his pistol and point it at Moran’s head. John unbuckles and yanks his belt off to wrap around Moran’s wrists and staggers to his feet, his gun trained on the back of Moran’s neck alongside Sherlock’s.

“That was absolutely brilliant,” Sherlock says, wiping his bloody nose with his sleeve.

“Told you that you should have taken me along,” John says, breathing hard. Sherlock’s answering smile is bright and blinding, and the most beautiful thing John thinks he’s ever seen.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Later, once the thugs were all in their proper place (jail) and the paintings in their proper place (a better vault), and they extract themselves from the fawning gratitude of the Gallerie owner, they make their way back to Sherlock’s hotel in the first flush of dawn, the adrenaline of the evening ebbing away but leaving John edgy, unsure.

He examines Sherlock’s cheek in the greenish light from the bathroom fixture—no damage, he thinks, just bruised sinuses which explains the blood from Sherlock’s nose—and tries not to read anything into Sherlock’s closed eyes and firm mouth.  The danger is over, the aftermath begun, and John dreads it, the re-establishment of that stoic façade and practiced distance that had always kept John at an arm’s length.

The water in the sink is pink, John notes absently as he stares at the water and works to clean Sherlock’s blood away from the cloth and his hands.  He finds he revels in it, feeling again the intimate touch of the evidence of Sherlock’s beating heart against his fingers. Sick, he thinks, for a doctor.

The water finally trickles down the drain clear and Sherlock still says nothing, perched on the toilet lid and arms wrapped around his naked torso. John can hear him breathing through his mouth, lips parted, and so John folds and puts away the cloth, turns around and leans back against the sink and does what he always does—saves Sherlock the trouble of speaking first.

“What happens now?” he says.

Sherlock’s eyes are still closed when he says “I’m not sure.”

“Are you coming home?”

“I … would like to come back to London, yes.”

John feels his heart leap in his chest. “But not to Baker Street.”

Those luminous eyes finally crack open and the stark pleading is almost more than John can bear. “I would … want nothing more. If you.…”

John leans forward, pulls Sherlock into him, forehead pressed against John’s stomach and his long arms around John’s waist. “Ridiculous bastard. I think it’s fairly obvious I do. You’d get yourself killed without me.” 

“Yes,” Sherlock mumbles into John’s stomach. “I think I would. I fully admit you were completely right about … today. About everything.”

Sherlock’s short hair is silky under his palms, and he pulls back to look Sherlock in the face, gets lost in the frank openness of Sherlock’s expression and dips his head to kiss him, lightly, a soft press of mouths.

Sherlock inhales sharply and John pulls back just a fraction, a whisper distance between them. “Tell me what was going on this morning,” John breathes, his voice quiet but echoing from the tile in the tiny, almost claustrophobic room.

“You know,” Sherlock says, and leans his forehead against John’s. “Jesus, John, you must know.”

“I don’t. I know that I want you so badly I can barely think sometimes. That when you died I died, everything around me died, and still I hoped each morning would be different. And now it _is_ , and I won’t wait to tell you any longer.” John strokes his thumbs over too-sharp cheekbones, feels the tickle of breath on his face and waits, three seconds. Four. Five. Six.

Sherlock lifts a hand to the back of John’s head, pulls him in and kisses him, hard and insistent and demanding, a release of a build-up of tension that leaves them both gasping for breath.

“Yes?” John says and Sherlock nods, eyes large and dark and liquid, desire apparent in his shallow breaths and clutching hands. John pulls him up by the hands, and they stumble the three steps from the loo to the bed and collapse on it, coming together with slow, deep, indulgent kisses that taste like adrenaline and blood.

This is what kissing Sherlock is meant to be like, John thinks, and he’s gratified to know that it is exactly like drowning, like being immersed. They shift onto their sides and his hands find their way around Sherlock’s back, and the press of his hands against hot skin makes Sherlock shiver and hook his leg over John’s hip.

John arches into that touch, fumbles with zips and buttons and catches until he can take Sherlock in his hand, stroke him with long, sure pulls that make Sherlock moan, whimper into his mouth. John’s hand is relentless, never allowing a pause for thought.  He wants it, wants to see Sherlock with gloriously sated eyes and soft open mouth again. John sets his lips against Sherlock’s throat as he feels Sherlock start to tremble, the vibration of his cries transmitted straight into John’s body as his release trickles across John’s hand.

Sherlock doesn’t even allow himself a moment of satisfied rest; to John’s surprise and greedy satisfaction he impatiently shoves his trousers and pants down to his knees and picks and pulls and wrestles John’s trousers down until he can roughly pull John against him, John’s cock slipping against the crease of Sherlock’s groin and into the tight heat between thighs slicked with his own come. John buries himself against it, rocking against Sherlock’s body, greedy and needful, Sherlock’s soft whispers of “Yes, yes, _this_ is what I wanted, always wanted,” winding him tight, tight, so tight until he comes undone, falling into the best sort of oblivion.

When John wakes a few hours later in the full sun of a summer’s day, body sticky and hot and plastered to Sherlock’s chest, he realizes that for the first time in a long, long time he has no idea what day it is, and he laughs.

…………………………………………………………………..

_Epilogue_

“You threw away all of my flasks?” Sherlock bellows, and John smiles and rolls his eyes as the echo of Sherlock’s indignation fills the flat once again, a reassurance that all is most definitely back to normal.

“They were crusted over with God knows what, Sherlock. It took a good two weeks for Mrs Hudson to get the nerve up to touch them, and even then she had to call me to help her sort out the acids. I told you to have a neutralization bucket somewhere.”

Sherlock stalks around the boxes that had been pulled from the basement. Not much of Sherlock’s chemistry apparatus is left, most of the larger, more expensive bits given to a school, but his microscope is still there, packed into its case. John wonders if he should point that out before Sherlock has a stroke.

Sherlock dives in, scattering bits and pieces over the table. “My Bunsen burner! My burettes! Oh my god, my condenser!”

John laughs, grabs Sherlock’s hand and pulls him in to kiss him. “Serves you right,” he says against Sherlock’s lips. “Should have left a note on it – ‘Not dead – do not throw away.’”

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says, suddenly contrite. “That’s really ... I’m sorry.”

John sighs. As happy as he is, as they are, there are still moments of anger and sorrow at unexpected times. But it will get better, he knows it will, with time. He squeezes Sherlock’s hand. “It’ll be fine. I’ll get you more. I’ll get you anything you want now that you’re home with me.”

Sherlock smirks, loops his arms around John’s waist. “You’ll regret saying that,” he says, “Because If you’d paid any attention at all in Killowny, you’d know we’ve plenty more work to do.”

“I’m sure I will. Tea?” John kisses Sherlock’s still slightly-swollen and bruised nose and turns away, moves toward the kettle, fills it and clicks it on. “And what work are you talking about?”

“Yes, please,” Sherlock says absently, flipping wads of packing paper all over the floor and cramming the coffee table with glassware and racks and bottles.  “And Moriarty’s sister, that’s what I’m talking about. Someone is keeping up the house and the accounts—you used them to find me over two months after Moriarty died. The entire enterprise is being run by the sister, which isn’t a surprise, really, as Moran never seemed quite clever enough.”

“Well, I wasn’t really spending time trying to sort out an international crime syndicate,” John says  as he listens to the clinks and bangs and exclamations from the other room and sees Sherlock dart across the doorway as he moves back and forth putting books back on the shelves. John never was made for a quiet life, and when he hears a sharp pop and a hiss and a gleeful cackle—oh God, Sherlock’s found the box of chemicals John never got around to clearing out— from the sitting room, he knows he’ll never have to worry about living one ever again. 

 


End file.
